On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 09:57:36AM +0800, Mark Tinka wrote: > I realize that Juniper have to make a new release every > quarter, and in most (if not all) cases, there is some new > feature which has the potential to cause "badness" to > systems that are already working fine. > > I think what I'd like to see is a fork of the code base > which consolidates all new features up until that point, and > then enters into a maintenance state - only bug fixes, with > no new features. > > Other iterations of the code would continue to come out with > new features every quarter.
In theory thats what should be happening today. Each minor version bump (i.e. 9.3->9.4) is effectively a new code base which is developed independantly from the previous version. A revision bump (R1->R2) should be entirely bug fixes, no new features should be added, and all feature development is occuring in future versions of code (i.e. 9.5 etc) which have not been released yet. But somehow they're managing to break a whole heck of a lot of stuff with every version, not just things related to the "new features", and many times between R version bumps as well. I really don't know enough about Juniper's development process to say anything intelligent about what the problem is, but it is a serious problem for those of us trying to run networks with it. My personal suspicion is a diluted focus on software for a stable core router, in favor of trying to stuff in features for firewalls and every other weird enterprise box that Juniper has branched off into. I'd also guess that the "one single software image" marketing line is now more of a liability than a benefit. I'll stop short of trying to tell them how to do their jobs (since again I really have no clue about most of the inner workings :P), but I think they could absolutely use a kick in the ass from customers to remind them that software stability needs to be a high priority again. Some attention to feature requests and customer feedback purely because it is the right thing to do rather than because it is a large account who requested it would also be a welcome throwback. And for the record, we all love Juniper and JUNOS (even those of us who gripe about the problems :P), we just don't want to see it continue to become a victim of its own success. If I want bloated buggy crap that is always a constant source of grief, I already have IOS. -- Richard A Steenbergen <r...@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC) _______________________________________________ juniper-nsp mailing list juniper-nsp@puck.nether.net https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp
